Sprinkle with Murder (9 page)

Ten

“She thinks I’m guilty,” Mel said to Angie as they worked side by side in the kitchen, frosting their freshly baked and cooled Red Velvet cupcakes with thick smears of cream cheese icing.
Mel wanted to sit down and stuff four of them into her mouth in rapid succession, but the profit side of her business made her resist such temptation. Anything eaten was one less bought, so chowing down on the cupcakes was not only bad for her butt spread, but it didn’t help business either.
“You have to wonder what the police think of her sparkling personality,” Angie said. “I mean, she doesn’t exactly hide how she felt about Christie. Don’t you think that would make her suspect number one, whether she has an alibi or not?”
“I don’t know,” Mel replied. “All I can figure, is she must have a really good one.”
“Did she give you any idea of anyone else who might have a motive?”
“The list was endless. Christie seemed to alienate everyone equally.”
“To the point of murder?” Angie asked skeptically.
“I know,” Mel said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“What doesn’t make sense?”
Both women turned towards the door to the shop. Framed in the doorway were Uncle Stan and his partner, Detective Rayburn.
Mel dropped her spatula into the bowl of frosting and wiped her hands on her apron. She crossed the room to give her uncle a quick hug. She wondered if it was just her imagination, or was he squeezing her a little tighter than usual?
“What can I do for you, Uncle Stan?”
“Actually, we’re here to talk to Angie,” he said.
Angie’s eyes went round, and she glanced at Mel as if to ask, “What the . . . ?”
“Miss DeLaura?” Detective Rayburn prompted her.
Although it was ridiculous, Mel felt her ears grow hot, and her heart thumped loudly in her chest. She really did not like the cloud of suspicion that seemed to hover over her. She decided to bluff.
“Use the office,” she suggested. “It’ll be more private.”
Uncle Stan gave her an approving nod, and Mel returned it with a weak smile.
They were going to find the small office a tight squeeze, but maybe that would move them on their way.
The door closed behind them and Mel could hear the low rumble of voices, but not any specific words, much to her chagrin. She slathered frosting on cupcakes, not really paying attention, while keeping her ears pricked up for words like “arrest” and “suspect,” but still, she heard nothing.
She wondered if Joe knew that his sister was being questioned. She could only imagine how that was going to go over. If the brothers had been unhappy with Angie giving up teaching to hawk cupcakes before, this was going to send them into multiple tailspins of brotherly distress.
Unbidden, an image of the woman Joe had been with last night flashed into her mind. Susan Ross was obviously from his world, a girl lawyer who dressed in Elie Tahari and probably drove an Infiniti, who didn’t know a spatula from a whisk and got all of her sustenance from takeout containers or leisurely dinners with her male coworkers.
Mel felt like an idiot for believing he’d been having dinner with his colleague and just thought he’d stop by. The man had been on a date. A date! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a date.
She grabbed a spoon and scraped up the last of the rich, tangy frosting. She licked it off the spoon as if it were a big lollipop. She knew it was wrong to be eating for comfort, but there was no denying that at the moment, it made her feel better.
She had to accept the reality that Joe DeLaura was a handsome, successful attorney who undoubtedly had to beat the women off with his briefcase. This was not news. He’d always had a girlfriend in high school. In fact, she and Angie had made his life a misery by demanding to go to the movies with him and his dates. Mama DeLaura had loved the idea. Mel was pretty sure Joe had never gotten past first base on any of his dates, because she and Angie were always there to keep him in check. Small wonder he never let them come visit him in college.
The bells hanging on the front door of the shop jangled, and Mel went to greet her customers. Three four-packs of cupcakes later, she was back in the kitchen. She was just putting the Red Velvets on a tray when the office door opened.
“If you think of anything, call me,” Uncle Stan said. Mel knew that tone. It wasn’t a request.
Angie nodded, looking grim.
Mel put four cupcakes in a box and handed it to Uncle Stan. He looked as if he’d refuse, but she stepped away, giving him no choice but to take it with him.
“Thanks, Mel,” he said. The outside door shut behind them.
With Angie’s help Mel hefted the fresh tray of cupcakes out to the main room to restock the display case.
“Where were you after we finished watching the movie at Tate’s?” Angie asked.
“I went home and went to bed,” Mel said. “I was dead on my feet from being up all night the night before, coming up with new flavors for Christie. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that and you know that, but Uncle Stan’s partner isn’t buying it,” she said. She sent a sour look in the direction of the door. “He wondered if I could provide an alibi for you or Tate. Mel, I’m afraid he thinks the two of you did this together.”
“For what possible reason?” Mel asked. “If Tate didn’t want to marry her, all he had to do was call it off.”
“He didn’t say as much, but I get the feeling there’s a lot of pressure coming from Christie’s father,” Angie said. “Mr. Stevens wants an arrest, like yesterday.”
“Melanie? Angela?” Only one person called Angie, Angela: Mel’s mother.
Sure enough, with a click-clack of high heels, Joyce Cooper strode through the front door into the bakery. She was wearing a narrow, knee-length black skirt with a lime colored silk blouse underneath a matching black jacket. Her champagne-colored bob was swept back from her face, and at her ears and around her left wrist she wore black pearls. She looked like she was ready to start kicking butt and taking names.
“Angela, you look as lovely as always.” Joyce hugged Angie, she had always adored her, and then turned to hug Mel but frowned instead.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” she asked.
Mel glanced down. Beneath her pink Fairy Tale Cupcakes apron, she still wore her black long-sleeved tee and black jeans. A little goth, perhaps, but it wasn’t like she was in her pajamas.
“I am dressed,” she said.
“Honestly!” Joyce rolled her eyes at Angie. “How do you put up with her?”
“Some days it’s tough,” Angie commiserated with a sigh. Mel stuck her tongue out at her.
“I saw that,” Joyce said, although she still had her back to Mel.
Mel huffed out an exasperated breath. Some people claimed their mothers had eyes in the backs of their heads, but Joyce really did.
“Hurry,” Joyce said as she spun back to her. “Our meeting is in twenty minutes, and you need to dress appropriately.”
“What meeting?” Mel asked.
“With your attorney,” Joyce said.
“You didn’t.”
“I told you I was going to.”
Angie’s head swiveled between them as if she were watching a tennis match.
“Johnny Dietz, the tax attorney?” Mel asked.
“Yes, and I don’t want to hear it. He’s a very competent attorney and he’s willing to help for free,” Joyce said.
Free? Mel hung her head. Joyce had game.
“Do you mind manning the shop alone for a little bit?” she asked Angie.
“Not at all,” Angie said. She kept her head down, and Mel suspected it was because she was trying not to laugh.
“Wear a dress,” her mother ordered. “It wouldn’t hurt you to look like a lady every now and then.”
Mel strode to the back door with her teeth clamped together. Before she left, she heard her mother ask, “Now, Angela, why is it I never hear about who you’re dating? Surely a lovely young lady like yourself has loads of boy-friends.”
Mel’s teeth unclenched, and she grinned. It was refreshing to have Joyce home in on someone else for a change. Maybe she could convince her to adopt Angie. Either that, or she could get her a puppy. In any event, something had to give. She could not be her mother’s only hobby.
Johnny Dietz’s office sat in the basement of a commercial property on the edge of Old Town. Small businesses, with names that gave Mel no clue as to what they actually did, filled the squat, five-story building of tinted glass and stone.
She followed her mother down the stairs to Dietz’s office. The receptionist offered them coffee or water, which they both declined, while they sat on the puffy brown couch and perused a collection of financial magazines that Mel thought would be grand for a night when she had a raging case of insomnia and CSPAN didn’t do the trick.
In no time at all, Johnny Dietz shot out of a door behind the reception area and approached them with his hands outstretched, looking like an evangelist offering a conversion.
Joyce stood and let him take her hands in his. He kissed her cheek and Mel thought, Ew.
Dietz was short, fat, and bald. His pudgy right hand sported a diamond-encrusted pinky ring, and Mel noticed that he kept the finger extended as if to let the diamonds catch the light at every opportunity.
“Joyce, how good to see you,” he said. “I was just delighted when I got your call. It’s been too long.”
“Yes, it has.”
Mel noticed that her mother surreptitiously slid her hands out of his as soon as was socially acceptable to do so.
“And Melanie.” Dietz turned to her and held out his hand. “Why, I haven’t seen you since you were in pigtails.”
Actually, she’d seen him at her father’s funeral ten years ago, and she was fairly certain that at twenty-four, she hadn’t been in pigtails, but she decided to let it go.
“Well, come in, come in,” he said. “Let’s go sit in my office and you can tell me what I can assist you with.”
Mel looked goggle-eyed at her mother. “You didn’t tell him?” she hissed.
“I didn’t want to get into it over the phone,” Joyce hissed back.
“Oh, my God,” Mel said. “I’m in a nightmare, aren’t I? Feel free to wake me up now.”
“Now, now.” Dietz smiled over his shoulder at her. “I’m sure it just seems like that. We’ll get whatever it is all straightened out, don’t you worry.”
“Really?” Mel asked. “Because the homicide detectives, one of whom is my own uncle, seem to think the best way to straighten it out is to arrest me for murder.”
“Um . . . I’m sorry. Homicide?” Dietz faltered as he pushed open the door to his office.
“How’s your criminal law?” Mel asked as she walked past him.
“You’re not a criminal,” Joyce said as she followed her and sat in one of the two chairs opposite the large walnut desk.
A small sand garden with a delicate wooden rake rested on the front edge of the desk. Mel had a feeling that by the time they left, Dietz was gong to need a miniature John Deere to ease his stress.
He sat in his desk chair with an ominous creak and swiveled to face them. His face was round and flushed. He glanced between the two of them and gave them a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but it was hard to pull off, given that he looked as alarmed as a man in over his head should.
“Perhaps you could get me up to speed,” he said.
“The love of Mel’s life was about to marry another,” Joyce said. She bit her lip and looked at Mel with a pity usually reserved for the terminally ill. “And they hired Mel to make the cupcakes for their wedding, she made some samples, the bride ate one, and died. Now the police are investigating.”
Dietz turned his head sideways to study Mel as if she were an abstract painting and he wasn’t sure which side was up.
“It sounds worse than it is,” Joyce tried to reassure him.
“And there are a couple of inaccuracies,” Mel said. “First, he is not now, nor has he ever been, the love of my life.”
Joyce opened her mouth to protest, but Mel held up her hand to nix the argument.
“Second, I don’t think my cupcake had anything to do with her dying. She just happened to be holding it when I found her body.”
Dietz blinked. He rose from his seat and flipped through his Rolodex. He quickly copied down a name and number on a blue Post-it.
“This is the best defense attorney in town,” he said, handing the note to Joyce. “Call him.”
“But . . .” Joyce began, but Dietz stayed in motion as he opened his office door and gestured them out.
“Great seeing you, really, don’t be a stranger.”
Mel and Joyce glanced at each other and slowly rose from their seats. There was no question they were dismissed.
As they crossed the parking lot, Joyce tucked the note into her purse. Once in the car, she turned the key and said, “Well, that was abrupt.”
“Too bad,” Mel said. “I think he wanted to ask you out, but you come with too much baggage.”
Joyce looked at her. “Well, if he can’t handle a murderess for a stepdaughter, what good is he?”
“Indeed.”
They drove silently back to Fairy Tale Cupcakes
.
Joyce pulled into a spot down the sidewalk from the shop and turned to Mel.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
“Don’t be. The police will find whoever did this. I’m sure of it.”
Joyce looked as if she wanted to discuss it more. Instead, she said, “I’m calling the number Johnny gave us—just in case.”
“That’s because you’re a good mom,” Mel said. She leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’ll call you later.”
She waved as her mother drove away and then trotted back into the shop. Her happy hour cupcake class was meeting in a half hour, and she hadn’t prepped tonight’s project, the Mojito cupcake. It was another of her personal favorites, although weren’t they all? The Mojito was a golden cupcake flavored with lime zest and dried spearmint leaves and topped with a rum-flavored icing.
Right about now Mel figured she could use a shot of rum icing—okay, maybe just the rum.
She hurried into the shop. Angie was waiting on three booths of customers and filling two takeout orders. Mel quickly donned her apron over her dress and began boxing up the next order.
“I baked the cupcakes for class tonight,” Angie said as they darted past each other. “You just need to frost them.”
“I love you,” Mel said.
“Yeah? Then give me a raise,” Angie teased.
“I’ll double your salary.”
“Wow. Really? Two times zero is what again?”
Mel grinned as she rang up the next customer. He was a tall gentleman with gray hair and kind blue eyes. She’d noticed he came in every Wednesday about this time. She glanced at the name on his bank card as she handed it back to him.
“Same time next week, Mr. Larson?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “It’s not bridge club if we don’t have our Fairy Tale cupcakes.”
Mel was hit again by the power of what she and Angie provided to their customers. Memories. When people bit into one of their cupcakes, they were enjoying a moment that recaptured the magic of childhood, nurtured their sweet tooth, and gave them something to share with a loved one.